With several thousand miles behind me since buying the Garmin Zumo 665LM and pairing it with the Sena SMH10 BlueTooth headset, you would think I would have all their mysteries solved. One that still remains is why the music played by the Zumo ends up sounding like over-driven, lo-fi AM radio through the Sena MOST of the time. This shouldn't be the case, as Garmin clearly advertises A2DP stereo support for this GPS.

Now, I do know that for simple GPS voice prompting via the SMH10, mono audio is more than adequate and that's exactly what the GPS transmits to the headset. It seems like every time I start the MP3 music playing after the Zumo and Sena have found each other, I end up being entertained by crappy sounding audio. What fun is that?

Solution(?): Through my experimentation during a recent run to Texas and back, I discovered that if I turn on the Zumo and start the MP3 music playing BEFORE I turn on the Sena SMH10, the headset seems to recognize the A2DP profile and play the sweet, stereo sound I expect to hear. This technique wasn't foolproof and I occasionally had to turn the SMH10 off and back on to correct the problem.

Bluetooth is supposed to make our lives easier. Why isn't this easy? I'm a techie and I'm starting to lose my patience with these problems. My Autocom may have been long in the tooth, but all I had to do was plug in my helmet and it just worked. Sheesh.